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Rating: 
Summary: Better than Sharra's Exile?
Review: I can't believe I'm the first to review this book. Where are all you loyal "freinds of darkover" hiding. Anyway I never read "Sharra's Exile" but I am well aware that this is the original story of Lew Alton and his dealings with the Sharra Matrix. Which is why I never bothered with Sharra's Exile, shoot read The heratige of hastur and this one and your all caught up. I like this one because it doesn't go to far into the characters, cause they always have the same problems no matter what family they come from, which actually makes me read more to actually find out what is going on. The ending is anti-climactic but who cares, Sharra's dead right? NOT!
Rating:
Summary: What MZB thought of Sword of Aldones
Review: Yes, I knew Marion. After helping me sell my first novel, House of Zeor, she became my writing mentor for many years, and I can safely say she taught me maybe 80% of what I know and today teach about writing -- maybe more -- in workshops such as the one at Westercon. Sword of Aldones was my absolute all time favorite Darkover novel, and that's still true today -- which was a disappointment to MZB. You see SoA was her first actual forray into attempting to take the embarrassingly juvenile "Sevener" series she wrote for personal amusement (as we today write Star Trek and Buffy stories)and turn it into a professional product. It's sale was a milestone in her life and professional career -- but she always knew and felt that it had technical and structural flaws. She felt the characters did a lot of running around, and people, issues and things popped out of nowhere, and the whole thing lacked a central motivational backbone. But you see - that is what I love about it. I just made up all the missing parts and never missed them. Thus while the rewrite of this part of Darkovan history is now the actual basis of the series, and SoA is ignored -- I found the rewrite less enjoyable because it told me the answers to all the unanswerable questions posed in SoA (which I had so much fun answering for myself). Because MZB and I are so very - VERY - different people, of course what I made up to explain the inexplicable is very different from what she eventually supplied. However, if you are as much of a Darkover fan as I am (I found Darkover when I was a Freshman at the U. of Calif at Berkeley - which is when I also discovered Theodore Bikel -- these two having literally changed my life) -- then you need to read and compare these two books and decide for yourself which is the actual foundation of the Darkover series. At the same time you will discover one of the foundations of my own Sime Gen Universe, now available on amazon.com. Sime Gen: The Unity Trilogy is much more like Sword of Aldones than it is like Sharra's Exile. Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Rating:
Summary: What MZB thought of Sword of Aldones
Review: Yes, I knew Marion. After helping me sell my first novel, House of Zeor, she became my writing mentor for many years, and I can safely say she taught me maybe 80% of what I know and today teach about writing -- maybe more -- in workshops such as the one at Westercon. Sword of Aldones was my absolute all time favorite Darkover novel, and that's still true today -- which was a disappointment to MZB. You see SoA was her first actual forray into attempting to take the embarrassingly juvenile "Sevener" series she wrote for personal amusement (as we today write Star Trek and Buffy stories)and turn it into a professional product. It's sale was a milestone in her life and professional career -- but she always knew and felt that it had technical and structural flaws. She felt the characters did a lot of running around, and people, issues and things popped out of nowhere, and the whole thing lacked a central motivational backbone. But you see - that is what I love about it. I just made up all the missing parts and never missed them. Thus while the rewrite of this part of Darkovan history is now the actual basis of the series, and SoA is ignored -- I found the rewrite less enjoyable because it told me the answers to all the unanswerable questions posed in SoA (which I had so much fun answering for myself). Because MZB and I are so very - VERY - different people, of course what I made up to explain the inexplicable is very different from what she eventually supplied. However, if you are as much of a Darkover fan as I am (I found Darkover when I was a Freshman at the U. of Calif at Berkeley - which is when I also discovered Theodore Bikel -- these two having literally changed my life) -- then you need to read and compare these two books and decide for yourself which is the actual foundation of the Darkover series. At the same time you will discover one of the foundations of my own Sime Gen Universe, now available on amazon.com. Sime Gen: The Unity Trilogy is much more like Sword of Aldones than it is like Sharra's Exile. Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
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